Shogunate Faction

The Shogunate Faction was a political clique of reactionary military leaders during the Tokugawa Shogunate that supported the traditional system against the desire for Westernization in Japan and the Court Faction, which supported the emperor. The faction included elite swordsmen, the feudal warlords of the country, who tried to prevent the Court Faction (which later split into the Imperialist and Nationalist factions) form restoring true political power to Emperor Meiji. The clique held power until around 1868, when the Meiji Restoration began the process of modernizing Japan as the emperor claimed full political power and the shogun lost his influence. Their final attempts to prevent it from happening, the Boshin War and the subsequent minor rebellions, were unable to restore the shogunate.